Doctors in Aligarh buy PPE after raising funds

"The Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College Hospital is one of the frontline medical centres for testing and treating COVID-19 patients in Uttar Pradesh," Shah Nawaz Iqbali, vice president of the resident doctors'' association, told reporters on Sunday. "The concern of the medical fraternity here should not be ignored."

"Keeping in view this looming threat, the resident doctors'' association has raised its own fund through donations for purchasing critical protective gear like surgical masks and sanitisers," Iqbali said.

He added that the RDA had immediately purchased protective gear worth Rs 1 lakh in the past four days.

According to RDA president Hamza Malik, the availability of protective gear for doctors at the hospital had reached a critical point when they had threatened to boycott work if necessary gear was not made available immediately.

The crisis was however defused on the intervention of the AMU Vice Chancellor Tariq Mansoor, who assured them that their concerns were being immediately addressed.

There are nearly 450 resident doctors at the 1,269-bedded hospital -- a tertiary-level facility of the Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College, which is affiliated to the Aligarh Muslim University.

A spokesperson of the medical college hospital, however, told PTI that the gears of the junior doctors were "misplaced" as adequate supply of protective equipment was in the pipeline.

He stressed that purchase procedures as stipulated by the central government regulations had to be strictly adhered to for ensuring transparency.